Abdominal pregnancy and lithopaedion

Abstract

Irving Loudon (May 2003 JRSM1) is quite right to accept the plausibility of the French Renaissance writer Boaistau's account of a ‘five-year pregnancy’. Two Renaissance physicians, d'Ailleboust and de Provancheres,2 describe an even more remarkable case. In 1582 in the French town of Sens, a necropsy was performed on a Madame Chatri who died at the age of 68. She had become pregnant for the first and only time 28 years previously. A normal pregnancy, prolonged labour and breaking of her waters ensued without the delivery of a child. Her abdomen remained swollen, hard and painful throughout her life. At necropsy her abdomen contained a perfectly formed and calcified ‘newborn’ female child. An earlier JRSM article by Bondeson3 recounts the story in some detail, provides copies of contemporary illustrations and traces the subsequent history of the ‘stone baby’. Eminent figures who examined the baby and made drawings included Ambroise Pare4 and Thomas Bartholin.5 The stone baby became famous and was exhibited in various centres before disappearing from the museum of the king of Denmark during the nineteenth century. The condition in which a fetus, probably extrauterine, remains in the abdominal cavity and becomes calcified is known as ‘lithopaedion’. A Medline search of lithopaedion/lithopedion yields 56 articles which, taken together, provide information on over 300 cases. The condition is compatible with a long life expectancy and there are several instances of the mother carrying the calcified fetus for over 50 years. Recent cases are from countries deficient in obstetric and surgical care; probably many cases go unreported. For instance, the last to come to my attention was by way of a report last year in the French newspaper, Le Figaro: Professor Ouazzani of Rabat, Morocco, successfully removed a calcified fetus weighing four kilos from the abdomen of a woman 46 years after her last pregnancy.6